It has been asserted, and the
statement has even been attributed to me, that highly developed late capitalist
society, particularly in the United States, is no longer really a class society;
that the gap between rich and poor has become smaller and the class struggle
no longer takes place; that the system has succeeded in removing or in any case
dampening the contradictions that Marx revealed. This is out of the question
and I have never maintained it. The fact is that in the last few years the gap
between rich and poor has become greater than ever before. The fact is that
the contradictions, the inner contradictions of the capitalist system, continue
to exist. They are manifested particularly sharply, far more sharply than before,
in the general contradiction between the enormous wealth of society that could
make a life without poverty and alienated labor really possible, and the repressive
and destructive manner in which this social wealth is employed and distributed.
Even the class struggle goes forward, although for the time being it does so
in a purely economic formwage demands, demands for the improvement of
working conditions, demands which at the moment can still be met within the
framework of the capitalist system, although their satisfaction is becoming
more and more difficult within this given framework as we see from the great
strikes of recent years and from inflation.

On the other hand, it is correct
that late capitalist society displays important differences from earlier periods
and that these differences lie essentially in what I have called the integration
of the majority of the working class into the existing system; an integration
which in its most pronounced form I should again limit to the society of the
United States.

This integration of the working
class sometimes goes so far that the working class can actually be characterized
as a pillar of the establishment—particularly insofar as its union leadership
and its support of American foreign policy are concerned. This integration is
by no means merely superficial or ideological: there are very good reasons for
it. Thanks in particular to the remarkable productivity of labor, late capitalism
has succeeded in raising the standard of living for the majority of the population.
Most workers, most skilled workers anyway, are very much better off today than
they were before. Indeed, to a great extent they share the comforts of the so‑called
consumer society and it is quite understandable, quite rational, and definitely
more than a result of propagandistic indoctrination or brainwashing, that they
are not willing to give up these relative advantages for an alternative "Socialism"
which in its pure state seems a utopia to them, or else looks like it does today
in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

So it is that, on the basis
of this growing productivity of labor and the constantly increasing abundance
of commodities, a manipulation and regulation of consciousness and the unconscious
has commenced, which for late capitalism has become one of its most necessary
control mechanisms. Again and again new needs have to be aroused to bring the
people to buy the latest commodities and to convince them that they actually
have a need for these commodities, and that these commodities will satisfy their
need. The consequence is that people are completely delivered up to the fetishism
of the world of commodities and in this way reproduce the capitalist system
even in their needs. The commodities have to be bought because everyone else
buys them and because in actual fact a need for these commodities has been stimulated
and aroused.

This means that they have to
be paid for, and as commodities are always getting more expensive, it also means
that the struggle for existence is becoming ever more intensive, even though
a rational distribution of labor and social wealth could reduce and lighten
its burden to an extent never before possible. But exactly the reverse tendency
is present in late capitalism. Precisely because of the accumulated social wealth,
the struggle for existence is intensified and does not become any easier. The
integration of the workers continues, but as I said, I think it is weakening.
I believe the inner contradictions already are far more apparent today than
they were a year ago and that even among the so‑called middle classes—the
bourgeoisie—the awareness is spreading that the relative prosperity that
exists in the so‑called consumer society is perhaps too dearly bought.
Too dearly bought, not only because of the inhuman mind and body‑killing
work that a highly mechanized and more or less automated industry requires today,
where a worker does nothing more for eight hours than turn the same screw or
press the same button or attach the same part to another part. These mind and
body‑killing activities are far too high a price when one considers that
this sort of struggle for existence is no longer really necessary today, and
that thanks to the present social wealth and the possibility of rationally exploiting
and distributing available resources, most of this work could be abolished;
that is, it could be automated. Of course this would involve the abolition of
the greater part of the insane waste that prevails in the so‑called consumer
society in the interest of the most urgent objective, namely, the abolition
of the poverty and misery which continue to exist and to be reproduced unceasingly
in highly developed capitalist society.

Another aspect that shows that
the price of the consumer society is exorbitant is the increasingly evident
fact that stability and prosperity in the United States are necessarily accompanied
by new colonial wars and the impoverishment and destruction of large areas of
the third world. This is a critique of the consumer society which shows that
the Marxist analysis is still valid today, but that a few fundamental concepts
of Marxist analysis, particularly the concept of the proletariat, need to be
differently formulated.

There is yet another, and, at
least at first sight, extraordinarily important defense of high capitalist society;
namely, that it maintains democracy and despite everything preserves a large
measure of pluralism. Now of course one has to admit, because it is a fact,
that there is still more freedom in the United States of America today than,
for example, in the Soviet Union, and certainly infinitely much more than in
the new fascist and semi-fascist dictatorships that are springing up
all over the world. On the other hand, one cannot overlook the degree to which
this democracy is a manipulated and limited democracy. There is no real opposition
in this country, in the sense that such an opposition could make use of the
mass media. There is, for example, not one real opposition newspaper such as
those in France or Italy. The Left, the radical Left, has no adequate access
to the mass media at all because it simply cannot raise the enormous amount
of money necessary to purchase equal time on the television networks and the
radio. From the very beginning, the Left is at a disadvantage in this democracy.
In addition, it is a well‑known fact that the political process is monopolized
by the two big party machines here, the Democrats and the Republicans, that
these two parties are fundamentally identical in all their objectives, and that
therefore there can be no question here of a real democracy that is nourished
from below.

This tendency for democracy
to be parceled out between dominant parties which are fundamentally united in
their objectives and policies is of course most advanced in the United States,
but I believe a similar tendency can also be seen very clearly in Europe, especially
in England and probably also in the Federal Republic of Germany.

INTERVIEWER: What then
does the alternative model of society look like?

MARCUSE: Well, the question
of an alternative always seemed a very simple one to me, and it still does today.
What young people want today is a society without war, without exploitation,
without repression and poverty and waste. Now, advanced industrial society has
at its disposal all the technical, scientific, and natural resources that are
necessary to constructsuch a society in reality. And all that is preventing
this liberation is the existing system and the interests that work day and night
defending this system, employing increasingly violent means to do so. The alternative
model does not seem to me so very difficult to define. How it should be concretized
is another question again. But I believe that as a result of the abolition of
poverty, massive waste, and destruction of resources, a way of life can be found
in which human beings can truly determine their own existence.

INTERVIEWER: And what
is the road to this society like?

MARCUSE: The road to
this society—that, of course, is something that can become concrete only in
the course of the struggle for this society. The first thing to say about it
is that it will be a different road in different countries according to their
various stages of development: development of the productive forces, of consciousness,
political tradition, etc. I should like to limit my comments to the United States
because I know this country best. I emphasize from the outset that the situation
in France and Italy, for example, is very different. There is, of course, the
question of the agent of change, the question "Who is the revolutionary
subject?" This question seems unreasonable to me because the revolutionary
subject can only evolve in the process of change itself. It is not a thing that
is simply there and that one has only to find somehow. The revolutionary subject
originates in praxis, in the development of consciousness, the development of
action.

INTERVIEWER: Could this
agent today be the working class?

MARCUSE: I have been
reproached for saying the working class is no longer a revolutionary subject.
That is, of course, a falsification of what I said. What I said is that the
working class in the United States today is not a revolutionary subject. That
is no value judgment on my part; it is, I believe, simply a statement of fact,
a description. And again the situation is very different in France and Italy,
where strong political traditions exist among the working class, where the standard
of living has not yet reached the high level of the United States, and where
consequently the radical potential of the working class is much greater than
in the United States.

INTERVIEWER: You have
always very strongly emphasized the role of the students. What role do they
play in a changing society?

MARCUSE: I have never
maintained that the student movement today has replaced the workers' movement
as a possible revolutionary subject.What I have said is that the student
movement functions today as a catalyst, as a forerunner of the revolutionary
movement and that today this is an extraordinarily crucial role. I believe that
all these defeatist remarks to the effect that a movement of intellectuals which
is limited mostly to universities and colleges cannot be a revolutionary movement,
and that it is only a movement of intellectuals, a so-called elite—these remarks
simply by‑ pass the facts. That is, in the universities and colleges of
today, the cadre of a future society is being educated and trained, and because
of this the development of consciousness, of critical thinking in the universities
and colleges, is a crucial task.

INTERVIEWER: What can
revolution start from today? Presumably no longer poverty, at least not in the
advanced countries.

MARCUSE: That depends
completely on the various countries. In countries where poverty prevails, it
will naturally play a crucial role. In other countries, it will not. Probably
the crucial characteristic of revolution in the twentieth or twenty-first
century is that it is born not primarily out of privation, but—let us say—out
of the general inhumanity, dehumanization, and disgust at the waste and excess
of the so‑called consumer society; that is, out of disgust at the brutality
and ignorance of human beings. Because of this, the chief demand of this revolution
will be—really for the first time in history—to find an existence worthy of
human beings and to construct a completely new form of life. This is a question
then, not only of quantitative change, but also of real qualitative change.

INTERVIEWER: Revolution
out of disgust—isn't that really an un‑Marxist thought?

MARCUSE: It's not an
un‑Marxist thought at all, for there are very strong objective and social
reasons for disgust. Disgust is indeed only the expression of a contradiction,
of the ever growing contradiction that permeates capitalist society, namely,
the contradiction between the enormous wealth of society and its wretched and
destructive employment. At a high level of consciousness this contradiction
expresses itself as disgust with the existing society.

MARCUSE: Reforms can
and must be attempted. Everything that can serve to alleviate poverty, misery,
and repression must be attempted. But exploitation and repression belong to
the essence of capitalist production just as war and the concentration of economic
power do. That means sooner or later the point is reached where reforms run
up against the limits of the system; where to put through reforms would be to
sever the roots of capitalist production—namely profit.

That is the point at which the
system will defend itself, must defend itself, against reforms in the interests
of self-preservation, and where the question then arises: "Is revolution
possible?"

INTERVIEWER: Roughly,
how will the emancipated, post-revolutionary society be organized? Can
the complex society of the western industrial countries, for example, be constructed
along the lines of a council system while preserving its efficiency and technological
standards?

MARCUSE: We cannot prescribe
today what the organizational forms of post‑revolutionary society will
actually look like. It would be senseless to do that. We are not free, and as
such, we cannot predetermine how free human beings would arrange their life
and society. We can, of course, adumbrate a few of the fundamental institutions.
The "council system" is of course, historically a very loaded term.
But I believe the basic idea is still valid. I said that in a free society human
beings determine their life, their existence. The first thing that is part of
this is that they determine how the socially necessary labor is to be divided
and for what objectives it is to be performed. At first this would probably
best be done in local and regional assemblies, committees, councils, or whatever
you want to call them; being on the spot, they would know best what priorities
are to be fixed and how the necessary social labor is to be allocated.

INTERVIEWER: But who
can guarantee that the abolition of the capitalist mode of production will lead
to a society in which the individual is free and can realize himself? At all
events the existing socialist societies don't justify this confidence.

MARCUSE: There is no
guarantee for it. History is not a insurance agency. One can't expect guarantees.
What one can say on the subject is that the abolition of capitalist society
in any case can and will provide the foundation upon which a free society could
grow.

INTERVIEWER: What concrete
political actions should the New Left take today? Would you recommend a policy
of alliance between this group and other critical but non‑Marxist forces?
For example, with parliamentary forces?

MARCUSE: The question
must be answered differently according to the degree of development in the various
capitalist countries. Where the counterrevolution is already at work, a policy
of alliance is necessary. But for the New Left this can only be temporary and
cannot become a political principle! And it can only be directed at specific
targets in specific situations, for instance, demonstrations and local elections.
And beyond that? I think that today all radical opposition is extra‑parliamentary
opposition.

INTERVIEWER: May the
New Left employ violence as well in its extra‑parliamentary actions against
the ruling system?

MARCUSE: Well, I do not
think this question can be discussed in a general conversation such as this
but only within the circle of participants and with an eye toward definite situations.
In general, on the question of violence I can only repeat what I have already
said; that in existing society violence is institutionalized to an absolutely
monstrous extent and the primary question is first of all, "From whom does
the violence come?" In any event, I believe we can say that—at least in
a period of incipient counterrevolution—violence comes first of all from the
existing society and that from this point of view the opposition is confronted
with the question of counterviolence, the violence of defense but definitely
not the violence of aggression.

INTERVIEWER: One last
question. Are you not presupposing in your emancipated society a new anthropological
structure of man? A human being who always does good, a human being who always
acts in solidarity?

MARCUSE: No, I don't
think so. What I am presuming is not a human being who always does good and
always acts in solidarity, but a human being who first of all, and perhaps for
the first time in history, really can act in solidarity and do good. I believe
that on the basis of the achievements of industrial society the possibility
is provided to emancipate extensively the instincts repressed in the interests
of domination, and that through these emancipated instincts—essentially the
life instincts and not the destructive instincts—something like solidarity can,
in fact, become reality for the first time in history. For the life instincts
are opposed to the aggressive instincts: they contain, in fact, the germ of
the possibilities and conditions necessary for an improvement of life, for a
greater enjoyment of life, and indeed, not against others, but with them.